


The joys of an IT girl

by Arasinyah



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Lifestyles, Babble Girl, Gen, Magical Island Herbs, Shaky Hands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:29:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2062899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arasinyah/pseuds/Arasinyah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a bunch of drabbles, mostly centred around Felicity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The IT Superpowers edition

"What's going on?" Felicity said noting the relative silence in the foundry. She had been gone for the weekend for a tech seminar and had expected something other than Roy and Diggle sitting around her screens, if Oliver was patrolling they didn't usually stick around and if he was out on a mission they would be there as back up.

"Oliver's interrogating the hacker." Diggle said turning back to the screen. "His name's James Corvin."

" The name sounds familiar actually but why aren't you both there?"

Roy shrugged. "Sarah went with, I'm not good at this stuff."

She turned her attention to Digg who hadn't taken his eyes off the scene playing out in front of him, Sarah and Oliver prowling around while the James was tied up to the chair. He had been working for someone else siphoning off money and information from company servers when Felicity's program and caught him allowing him to steal a tracking bug in the form of financial plans.

"The location came up an hour ago but the boy's good, he's holding up. Shouldn't be surprised though he's been picked up by almost every security agency except A.R.G.U.S."

"That just means he's not that good a hacker, I mean have you seen FBI's firewalls? Getting caught cracking that is a mark of stupidity."

Felicity shooed Roy off a chair ignoring his protests and went about looking up the hacker's activity, fist pumping when she found something of interest and put in her own bluetooth comm into her ear.

"Oliver, tell him Hecate is watching."

 _"Hecate?"_ Oliver said confused and the hacker's face bloomed with utter fear, a reaction they'd been looking for .

"Tell him Hecate is watching and she hasn't forgotten."

Oliver repeated those words despite the odd look Sarah gave him and James sang like a canary giving up every single detail about his employers and Felicity twirled in her chair, victorious.

Give her a knife and she'd cut her finger on it, give her a bo staff and she'd drop it on her foot, give her something to punch and she'd break her knuckles but give her a keyboard and she could throw the world into chaos and no one would ever know it was her.

But the rest of the team didn't seem to realise it at all. Oh they knew she could ruin their lives but they thought that she lacked the motivation to, that she was innocent and removed from it all. They didn't seem to realise that she had been hacking long before Oliver was even on that damn island. Her past was just as chequered as theirs but she'd managed to erase it and rewrite it to her own liking in ways they couldn't.

"Who's Hecate?" Roy asked.

"She's the Goddess of magic, crossroads, moon, ghosts, necromancy, poisonous herbs and all that cool stuff."

"And?"

"And it's also a name I went by in my old days. I've actually run into Corvin before and kind of ruined him. He was harassing a friend of mine." She shrugged.

Roy leaned back in awe.

"It's like you have superpowers." Diggle said indulgently, as if he hadn't just seen a man crack completely because of a mention of her pseudonym. Her name had inspired more fear than the Green Arrow and they still weren't taking her seriously as a threat. She supposed it was one of the side effects of being named something that literally mean 'happiness'.

"Yes, I could be IT girl and use my keyboard to wield justice!" Felicity said dramatically. "I could have some lame catchphrase like Oliver does."

 _"I don't have a catchphrase."_ Oliver said over the comm. A strangled laugh escaped Sarah.

"Sure you do, 'You have failed this city!', that's your catchphrase." She stilled putting a finger to her forehead. "Shh, my IT senses are tingling."

_"Seriously?"_

"With great technology comes great power."

_"Come on."_

"It's the technology we need not the technology we deserve."

_"This is ridiculous."_

"You have failed this OS!" Diggle and Roy sniggered at that.

_"Felicity!"_


	2. The Magical Island Herbs

Felicity was acting strange. She had been acting strange ever since the events at Queen mansion where Oliver had told her he loved her but she was acting even stranger. She kept on looking at him when she thought he didn't notice. That wasn't particularly out of the ordinary but he wasn't shirtless or on the salmon ladder either, he was just sitting here going through his paperwork and she looked far too contemplative.

"Oliver?"

"Hmm?"

"When you were on the island, you were with Shado right? Like, _with_ with Shado"

"Yes." He wondered where this was going.

"So you must have had sex with her, right?"

"Felicity I-" He began in a gentle tone only to be interrupted.

"What the hell did you use for protection, I mean middle of a  jungle-y island isn't the place for condom vending machines or pharmacists. And having a baby would be very dumb given the limited resources so how did you stay safe?" She said very quickly and Oliver was taken aback.

"The island herbs, they acted as birth control as well."

"Wait, what?! Oliver I've had those magic herbs!"

"Yes but they-" She stood up and began pacing the room. Oliver wondered if this was how they felt when he got annoyed at something and started ranting and raving.

"You can't do that, you can't just give a person drugs that imitate hormones without telling them or considering the possible side effects of them interacting with medication they're already on!" She said aghast and picked up her phone dialling a number.

"You were dying and I -Felicity who are you calling?"

"My endocrinologist, I need to have my hormone levels tested!"


	3. Hands

Her hands were shaking.

Oliver had only just noticed it when she quickly put her fingers on the touchscreen, tapping away and suddenly immersed in an intense game of candy crush but he knew what he had seen.

She was always big in her gestures, her hands never really still for that long and that was probably why it had taken him so long to notice but her hands were shaking and it was gnawing away at him. Maybe the stress of their double life was getting to her; maybe she was getting tired of stitching him up every other night. Maybe the stress of it all was spilling over into her normal life, what other reason could there be for her hands shaking uncontrollably while they waited for their order to come?

"Felicity, are you alright?"

"I'm really hungry." She said biting her lip as she looked over his head, looking for their server to return with food.

"But other than that, you're alright?" He said softly, hoping to coax an answer from her.

She shot him a strange look. "Uh yeah, why?"

"You can take a few days off our nightly activities if you're stressed out."

"I already said I'm fine, what's this about Oliver?"

"Your hands are shaking." He said in a barely heard whisper and she looked down to see her fingers trembling hard.

"Oh that, it's fine it'll be gone once I eat the burger." She said flippantly, waving it off but when her hands returned to the table they were still shaking and Oliver was starting to lose his composure.

"Are you sure you'll be fine?" He didn't take his eyes off the hands, fingernails painted a jet black fading into a sparkly royal blue at the ends, still unstable and unable to handle it he looked her in the eyes. "You know you can tell me anything, right?"

"Uh, yeah but some things might be awkward for you to hear."

He leaned forward taking her hands in his running his thumbs over the knuckles soothingly. "What's wrong?"

"Oliver it's really no big deal I-"

" _Please_."

She sighed and rolled her eyes, plucking her hands out of his and sat back. "Fine but only because if I don't you're going to get really dramatic and spiral into a vortex of self loathing and guilt." She shook her head. "I'm on my period and I can't stomach any food for the first day so I have low blood sugar right now. No biggie. It always happens; once I have some food in me I'll be fine."

"Oh." That was not exactly what he expected.

Felicity snorted. "Yeah. Not everything in life is a result of a dramatic life changing experience Oliver. Sometimes it's just a uterus that's pissed off at you because you didn't get knocked up, not that there was ever a chance of that seeing as how I spend all my nights with you in an entirely platonic manner. And it's not enough that you're in a world of pain, no you have to get overly emotional too so you cry at the drop of a hat, it's like 'hey, the milk just expired, what're you gonna do about it' and suddenly you're sobbing your eyes out because it didn't get to fulfil its destiny of being eaten together with cereal, I mean what the hell?! Stupid uterus." Her voice broke on the last word and disgruntled and verging on tears she looked down herself, twisting her face before staring at him with a frown. "And now I've babbled on and on about my monthly edition of penis envy. Happy?!"

With a dramatic huff she whirled out before returning two seconds later, sitting down with a whoosh.

"I forgot my burger!"

Oliver didn't say anything about her hands after that.


	4. The in-between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So obviously something happened in the time that Felicity spent with Slade that made him think of her as being 'lovely'. This is just my short take on it.

"He'll never really love you, you know, not with the Lances running wild. Maybe not even when they're…not." Slade smiled, the predatory grin belying the hidden meaning that he would be the one to kill them and stop them.

Felicity simply blinked. "So?"

"You're setting yourself up for nothing but pain sweetheart, that boy's always been nuts about the Lance sisters, he'll never choose you."

"Again, so?"

"So? So you'll never be the one he wants, you'll never be the one he runs to."

"So?"

Slade leaned away tilting his head to look at her with just a hint of confusion. "So that'll hurt your feelings." He said slowly as if talking to a child.

"Will it? You know my feelings better than me do you?" She leaned forward closing the gap he had created between them quickly, resting her chin on interlaced fingers. He quickly grew unnerved by her steady stare and the utter lack of fear in it. "Did you love Shado?"

"Of course I did." He growled.

"But you stayed anyway even though watching her with Oliver hurt. Why did you do that?" His face shuttered and he snarled before pulling away and walking to the door but her voice stilled him just as his hand reached for the doorknob. "Because it was worth it to see her happy, even if it was with someone else. Because Oliver doesn't need to pick me for me to pick him. Love doesn't work that way, it isn't conditional upon being returned."

"Are you so willing to die for his cause _Felicity_?" He mocked the way Oliver said her name but his heart wasn't in it, he was too angry and uncontrolled, she had gotten under his skin and burrowed herself a home there.

"There are some people worth dying for and you do me the honour of giving me the chance to die for someone I care about deeply. I thank you for that Mr Wilson." She brought her hand up to give him a two fingered salute complete with a  wink and a cluck of her tongue and he left, a twitch in his one eye that refused to settle.


	5. The Disney speculation

Sometimes Diggle felt like he was watching a Disney movie. A sick, twisted, violent Disney movie but a Disney movie nonetheless. Especially in moments like these.

He stood across the lair and watched Felicity and Oliver look at each other intensely, sharing yet another one of their quiet moments.  They'd been arguing too softly for him to hear but she'd looked concerned and angry while he'd been stubborn before softening just a bit and saying something that wiped the anger off her face leaving her thoughtful instead. They stared at each other and Diggle sighed.

Honestly, the girl might as well be combing her hair with a  fork and making big bambi eyes while Oliver remained oblivious, or at least pretended to be oblivious. Sometimes it worried Diggle how well he knew that movie but then he remembered how it was Felicity's go to feel good movie and he had watched a lot of it with her in the five months after the Undertaking when Oliver had gone back to Lian Yu. Then he simply worries about how strange Felicity's idea of 'feel good' was if a Disney movie about talking fishes and leaving everything you know for a guy who doesn't know you by making a deal with an evil Sea witch for legs, was comforting for her.

Sometimes he wondered if he should just burst into song. "Kiss the girl" seemed like the right choice.

Unbelievable, he was in a Disney movie and he was the lobster.


	6. Pillow Talk

"Am I dead?!" Is the first thing Felicity asks when she opens her eyes. Circled around her head, Digg, Oliver and Roy take a breath of relief.

"No you're not dead." Diggle says with a hint of amusement, helping her sit up while Roy and Oliver adopt twin looks of guilt. "Just a bit banged up. A bit of make-up and you'll be fine to go in to work tomorrow and no one would know the difference. Except for the bump on the back of your head."

"Oh good, I thought there'd be more hot guys in heaven." The guilt is wiped away to be replaced with confusion. And a bit of scepticism as well because everyone in the room had caught Felicity ogling them at some point or another *coughyesterdaycough*. "Not that you guys aren't hot I just expected more hot guys than just three. In various state of undress too because I deserve a harem. I mean really all the sexual frustration I suffer alone merits me many, many hot guys preferably in speedos by a poolside handing me daiquiris and when you think of all the man pain and brooding I have to put up with too, I deserve even more hot guys in banana hammocks and….Digg am I drugged or is this just me with no control over my mouth?"

"A bit of both." Digg says once he stops chuckling.

Felicity picks up the pillow and smothers herself with it.


	7. Call of the Coven

Felicity hated mysteries. They needed to be solved in her not so humble, utterly amazing opinion. Consequently their newest criminal had her baffled, annoyed and just a bit excited.

She didn’t _like_ mysteries but they were just ever so much fun to dismantle.

They didn’t have much to go on, just three bodies in the SCPD morgue with traces of a drug in them. Preliminary investigations suggested it was a weaker strain of Vertigo mixed with something else and they had Barry on it but getting a sample had taken some time. The only reason they even knew that the three were connected was the fact that there were gaps in the timeline leading up to their deaths, gaps that all coincided. She had found no traces of them even being in the city in those few hours of the night when they had been out and yet nowhere to be found, her facial recognition system getting no hits whatsoever and it made no sense.

But really, what did a hedge fund manager, a baker and a social worker have in common? It sounded like the start of some bad joke but their paths had never crossed and all of them worked on opposite ends of the city. The Hedge Fund Manager had never even strayed downtown let alone to the Glades where the Social Worker lived and worked and the Baker lived far out in the suburbs with a part time job at a patisserie there. These three people had for all thoughts and purposes, never met.

The clang of the salmon ladder broke her out of her thought. She looked away from her screens to catch a glimpse of Oliver making his way up the ladder, sweat glistening on his body and nodded in approval. Digg was out with Lyla and the Digglet and Oliver needed a distraction from the issues at QC not to mention his missing sister. He needed a criminal to take out but right now there was absolutely nothing she could give him. Even Sin hadn’t heard of anything.

He made his way down the ladder and took up training against the dummy instead, the sound of skin and muscle pounding against plastic stretched over stuffing filling the new lair and she sighed rolling her eyes.

If he hadn’t gone all guilty and angtsy when she’d ended up on the gurney after their first and apparently last date had blown up in their faces then she could have helped him relieve the tension in entirely different sweat inducing ways. Felicity could think of plenty of ways she could get him to relax and really, only a few of them needed a bed.

All of them needed consent though and with that sobering thought went back to her babies, intent on distracting herself in the old fashioned way, with some pointless social networking.

She had a few pending friend requests and clicked on the latest one only to snort.

“What is it?” Oliver said, his voice sounding far too close for someone who had been at the opposite end of the room just a second ago and she jolted, swivelling in her chair.

“Jeez, could you at least try to make some noise?! I don’t want to have a heart attack at this young an age.”

“Did you find something?” He ignored her request to make some noise even though the ends of his lips quirked into a smile. She shook the thought of his mouth out of her head and turned back to the screen.

“No just going through my FaceBook, one of my exes pinged me.” An involuntary laugh burst out her.

“What’s so funny about that?” He frowned, mouth turning sulky again and she detected a hint of worry in his words.

“It’s just a bit weird seeing him like _this_.” She raised  hand to point at the profile picture of a certain Michael Conway in which he was found smiling, clean shaven with a crooked jaw and a dimpled in one cheek, the sun shining bright causing a flare in the picture.

“That's weird?”

“Well, back when we were dating he went by Dante Le Mort.”

“He gave you a fake name.”

 _‘And you fell for it?!’_ Oliver meant to say. Still, his incredulity in the face of someone giving her fake information and getting away with it made her feel proud.

“No that was his vampire name, he had given up his dreary mortal life you see.”

Oliver blinked. “...What?”

She laughed. It was cute seeing Oliver actually show his surprise and not just hide it beneath a veneer of man pain.

“He had a vampire fetish and was really into that sort of lifestyle. Even had ceramic veneers back then of fangs. We broke up when he wanted to ‘turn’ me and become a part of his Coven.”

“And you dated him?”

“Yes I dated him.” She teased, “I enjoyed being his ‘victim’, the biting was kind of fun. Plus he slept in a coffin so the sex was acrobatic and creative.” She drifted off thinking of that coffin. She’d had a lot of orgasms in that coffin. He gulped but she ignored that.

“People really do that sort of stuff?”

“Sure they do, there’s a Coven right here in Starling City. There’re Vampire fetishes and Lycan ones. Even Zombie Walks, we had them back in college. I got invited to one here but, you know, I already have enough bloody nightly activities.”

“Zombie Walks?”

“It’s a hunting game basically, people dress up as Zombies and they hunt the ‘normals’, the humans, for food and turn them. There was one last week.” Felicity thought back to the Zombie Walk she’d monitored while Oliver was out patrolling. The costumes had been so detailed and the make-up on some of them was mind blowing too.

“Last week?”

“Yeah on-” The grin dropped off her face as she realised, “Last Friday from twelve to four, the exact same time that the three drug victims went off the grid.”

“You don’t think...?”

“It makes sense, if they were in enough make up the face recognition system wouldn’t find them and these things aren’t exactly legal so they must have some idea of the cameras’ blind spots. I only caught them because of the few we’ve put up in Sin’s old warehouse and because I was looking for them. And I _know_ some of the Zombies do drugs to enhance the feel of it so there must be a dealer there as well!”

Oliver nodded, in full Arrow mode and set about putting on his costume. “Give me the coordinates; I’ll go check it out.”

“Just a second.” She said clicking on the Accept button before returning to Arrow business rattling off the address only to find him mid zip up and staring at her.

“You accepted his friend request?” He asked, bewildered.

Felicity shrugged.“He gave me multiple orgasms, it’s the least I could do.”


	8. The Wal-Mart edition

Angelina from QC’s Human Resources department paused in her step, the grocery list in her hand momentarily forgotten. At the other end of the frozen goods aisle stood one Felicity Smoak, looking distressed and tired, rubbing her head viciously. So lost was the former IT extraordinaire, in fact that she hadn’t even noticed Angelina and silently she wondered if she should approach the blonde.

They hadn’t been the best of friends, or friends at all really, more like friendly acquaintances. Angelina had admired Felicity’s intellect and Felicity had helped her out once when her computer had crashed, to the point where it hadn’t crashed even _once_ since and that had been a full two years ago. She pondered what to do and finally decided that only if Felicity noticed her would she go up to her and chat. Besides the blonde looked frazzled and since the urban legend of what happened to the Guy In Accounting Who Hit On Felicity was still going strong, Angelina didn’t want to aggravate her at all.

She felt rather sad for Felicity really. If she had continued in her IT job then she would have been fine but since her ‘promotion’ to Oliver Queen’s executive assistant, Felicity must have undoubtedly been out of a job by now. The rest of the employees were fine for the next few months at least but the people on the corporate floors had been re-shuffled so that no one really knew who the boss was anymore, especially since Oliver Queen was definitely out of the picture. The man didn’t even have his home for God’s sake, The Queen Manor having been seized by the bank.

Ah, Oliver Queen. Angelina drifted as she thought of that face and that ass. She had known Oliver vaguely during her college days, he had been in SCU for a few months in some of the same classes as her before getting thrown out. She was certain he didn’t remember her though considering that she’d never actually seen him sober. Her roommate had had a torrid affair with him and even Angelina might have tried her luck at him if he wasn’t such a train wreck in those days especially with that hair.

As if by divine interference the man himself appeared and from all the way at the opposite end of the aisle Angelina could see the vein in Felicity’s forehead ticking away while Oliver inspected what appeared to be a tube of toothpaste.

Oliver Queen. In WalMart. He must have been really broke, Angelina thought and realised that Felicity was there teaching him how to live on a budget. Her eyes drifted to the blonde who was piling pints of ice cream into her trolley.

She had heard the rumours of course, of how Felicity had earned her job on her knees and been shocked. Not that Oliver Queen would give someone a job on the merits of their...assets rather than their qualifications but that Felicity would do so. Nothing about that made sense, Felicity was a smart girl and yet this had happened. Angelina had mourned the loss of a fellow woman to the Queen Charm.

But that Felicity was still there with him, it surprised her. He had no money, no qualifications, the _worst_ possible record with relationships and yet she was there. Whatever Felicity was, she wasn’t a gold digger that was for sure.

She looked back to the couple who was still standing at the end, Oliver talking away while Felicity rubbed her eyes. He walked ahead of her and she glared at the back of his head, mouthing curses at him and in that moment Angelina realised that there was no way there was anything between those two. They were just friends, obviously.

Because no woman who had sex on tap from Oliver Queen would look _that_ frustrated. Angelina resolved to try and make those rumours die a painful death, the girl really deserved better.

Besides, her skirts really weren’t that short anyway.


	9. The vuw confession

"Felicity, I love you." Oliver said and she leaned in closer with a smile as if making to kiss him and with a shit eating grin he bent down as well.

"Is someone watching?" She asked softly instead of the kiss he was expecting and he pouted.

"What?"

"Shh, not so loud, what if the cameras hear you?!" She whispered urgently and Oliver frowned pulling back.

"There are no cameras."

"Really?"

Oliver was offended by how suspicious and surprised Felicity looked. But then he remembered that the last time he'd said those words had been when Slade had cameras all over Queen Mansion.

"Felicity there are no cameras. I just wanted to tell you that I love you."

She narrowed her eyes. "You're going to do something stupid and self sacrificing aren't you? This is you saying goodbye without saying goodbye. Well let me tell you Oliver Queen, I am watching you and if you so much as breathe in the wrong direction I'm coming after you." She waved a finger in his face.

Oliver spluttered. "Why do you think I'm going to do something self sacrificing and stupid?"

"It's your MO. You get close, something gets wrong, you get guilty, decide to leave and say goodbye in the weirdest ways. Last time it was the bottle of wine and a million dollars."

"I'm not saying goodbye, I'm just trying to tell you that I love you, woman!"

She still glared. "Without any weird conditions to it like 'Ooh, I'm toxic, I love you but stay away from me'?"

"I don't sound like that. And no, with no conditions."

Felicity shrugged. "Sorry but you do have this tendency for big dramatics. Like the boy cried wolf." And then she tensed. "Wait, did you just confess that you loved me without getting weird about it?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, I did."

"Oh. Ohhhh. Holy crap." It had apparently just sunk in that he had told her he loved her. And then her eyes rolled back into her head and she dropped to the ground in a dead faint, Oliver catching her just before she hit the ground and Diggle came in at the sound.

"What the hell happened?" He asked even as he checked on Felicity's breathing.

"I think she just passed out because I told her I love her." Explained a confused Oliver. Surely he wasn't that bad? But then Diggle sighed and twsited his face, making Oliver aware of exactly what the team thought of him.

"Great I'm going to get a million dollars in my bank account and have to jump out of a plane. Again."


	10. In which there is a date

“Right well, I’m off.” Felicity said, putting a fresh layer of lipstick on, taking her hair out of the ponytail and fluffing it up and got off her desk, clicking a few things even as she pulled away. Oliver and Diggle watched as she quite obviously prepared herself for a date and Diggle shot a worried look at Oliver. “I’ve set it up so I’ll get an alert if you need me.”

“So,”Diggle said tentatively. “Hot date?”

“I don’t know if it’s hot per say, he’s taking me out to that little pizza place around the block form Big Belly, you know? And I highly doubt that garlic breath is conducive to hot dates. Unless he has a garlic fetish.”

“I’d have though Ray would take you someplace else. Some big five star restaurant you have to dress up for.”

“Well you’ll have to ask Ray where he’d take me but James is taking me to the trattoria. Seems like fun, it got good reviews on Yelp.” She shrugged.

“Wait you’re not going out with Ray?”

“No.”

“But I thought-“ Oliver started but trailed off. The whole ‘let’s never mention this again’ thing they had going on would not take well to him saying that he’d seen them making out when he’d come to confess his love to her. That would make thing quite awkward.

“Ray after making out with me passionately and wonderfully pulled an Oliver and copped out. Said he wanted to keep things platonic and not complicate our working relationship. Which is when I stomped on his foot like a flamenco dancer and said that our professional relationship would remain amicable as long s he stopped peacocking around me. He took it quite well actually.”

“And James?”

“Is a guy I met at a coffee shop. I was in a rush and forgot my Danish and he caught me just as I was on my way out to hand it to me. He asked me out and seeing as how I’m quite annoyed with getting nothing but subtext in every single relationship of mine, I accepted.”

With a fake, fake smile at Oliver and John she swept out in a flurry of blonde hair and pink lipstick. Oliver stared tae hr back with a morose expression but slipped into his grr face when he heard badly smothered chuckles next to him.

“Oh this is just way too funny. None of you get the girl! Instead of the billionaires she goes for the normal guy next door!”

“Thank you for your support Diggle.” Oliver said dryly but it only set Diggle even more.

* * *

On the roof across from the trattoria where Felicity and James were laughing and having a nice Italian dinner without people blowing things up, stood a hooded man in the shadows. His eyes gazed over her face lovingly before turning venomous eyes to James.

According to her computers, James  Morey, was a doctor at Starling City General. He had no police record whatsoever, not even a parking ticket. He was a boy scout, did volunteer work, ran few medical camps. He was perfect.

Not as good looking as him of course, his nose was a bit broken, his teeth weren’t the kind of perfect that Oliver’s were and he had terrible eyebags as well.

But he had just made Felicity laugh so hard she was leaning to the left because her right side had a stitch.

A slight sound to his right caught his attention. It sounded like a little growl and Oliver slunk back further into the shadows and turned to see, waiting for whoever it was making that sound to show themselves. Out of the dark came a man in a tight blue costume with red accents which looked ridiculous. But he stood in the same way that Oliver did and that was worrying. And then Oliver noticed that this suited up poser was looking straight at Felicity and the Arrow came blazing out, ready for a fight.

* * *

Felicity was having way too much fun. For once she was a normal girl going on a normal date with normal things to worry about like whether he’d kiss her at the end even if she had garlic breath. It was nice to worry about that instead of worrying about having a ten million dollar necklace around her neck or worrying about a vigilante needing her help.

And then came a crashing sound and screams filled the air. As she ran out along with James to see what was causing all the commotion, Felicity wondered if she’d ever be able to eat Italian again.

 What she found herself looking at was straight out of the comic books her roommate at MIT had hoarded. Two hot guys in skin tight costumes grappling with one another. She would have been able to appreciate it much better if she didn’t know that the one in the green was her we-went-out-on-one -date-and-so-that-makes-us-kind-of-exes/vigilante boss and that the other as she recognised from the fact that that perfect shoulder to waist ratio had been up on a salmon ladder a few days ago, trying to entice her, was probably her we-kissed-once-that-makes-us-sort-of-exes/work boss.

“It’s the Arrow!” James said in wonder.

“What the hell is he doing here?!” She said loudly. Loud enough for Arrow and the new guy (probably Ray) to hear her and with a few flashy manoeuvres they both disappeared.

* * *

Ray sat down at his desk, ready to get on to a productive day of work. He had introduced himself to the Arrow, announced his intentions to clean up the city and avoided answering the Arrow’s questions about why he was sort of, kind of stalking Felicity by deflecting and asking the Arrow why he knew Felicity.

Actually why did he know Felicity? Why was the arrow there to begin with?

Could it be that the Arrow was there doing the same as him?

As soon as the thought came to his head he dismissed it.

A throat being cleared jolted him out of his thoughts and he looked up to find Felicity right there tapping her foot on the floor, looking decidedly pissed off. He didn’t know why though.

“Hello Miss Smoak.” He said as smoothly as he could manage.

She smiled back but it was tight. “Hello Mr Palmer, I see you’re not wearing that blue outfit from yesterday?”

He pushed down that little bit of panic that began coursing through him the minute she said those words with that odd emphasis. She couldn’t know, of course not.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken Miss Smoak, I was wearing black yesterday.”

“In the day at work sure, but last night while looking out over Italian restaurants it was blue. With a bit of red at the hands I believe.”

Okay, she knew.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said nervously and she smiled a shark’s smile.

“Hypothetically speaking, if I catch you lingering around any of my dates in a blue and red suit, the consequences you’ll face will not be fun for you. So please, don’t do anything stupid.”

“Hypothetically speaking, what consequences are we talking about?”

“Oh you know the usual, confidential plans floating around the internet, bank accounts drained completely, secret identities being speculated upon with a surprising amount of evidence to back it up. That sort of thing.”

“Right, understood.”

“Great.” She grinned and left.

Just when he thought she couldn’t get hotter.

* * *

“Oliver.”

“I was just concerned.” He said before she could say anything.

“If this happens even one more time, I shall be leaving the team. And I’ll also be telling Thea everything. And by everything I mean _everything_. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have another date with James who asked me out again to make up for the interrupted date instead of just kissing me and then pushing me away like some people.”

She walked off, ponytail swinging from side to side.

Diggle chortled. “I love that girl.”

* * *

“So James, ”She said as they sat at the little bistro and gorged on gorgeous soups and salads and tiny sandwiches. “Seeing as how our date was crashed by two men in tights last time, I feel the need to ask you, do you also have a secret identity that I should be aware of.” She said stoically. James laughed but stopped when she remained that serious.

“Umm no.”

“So you don’t go around leaping form roof to roof in tights at night?”

“No. Although there was that one time when my sister forced me to wear her tights but that was years ago and I couldn’t move at all in them let alone jump from roof to roof.”

“Excellent, want to come back to my place for coffee?”

* * *

“They’re going back to her place!” Atom told Arrow as they watched the pair from a bit away.

“Shh, were supposed to keep a  low profile.”

“It’s not working.” Said the little boy next to them who had stumbled upon the two men in tights (exosuit, the blue one had claimed) and promptly decided to stay put right there.

“They’re...I can’t believe this.” Atom said softly sounding sad. The little boy snorted.

“Maybe if you spent less time on roofs watching her you might have a chance.”

“You really think so?” Atom asked, hopefully.

“No.” The boy laughed viciously. “You two are going to be alone for the rest of your lives. Maybe you should date each other instead.” He said and left.

“Kids these days.” The Arrow scoffed. The Atom nodded.


End file.
